How to use DPReview Galleries

Navigation bar

At the top of every gallery page is the navigation bar, this provides links to other gallery pages as well as brief information about the page you are viewing. The three primary sections of galleries are; All photos, Albums and Upload.

Setting your preferences

As a member you can choose what your viewing safety level should be (Safe / Moderate / Restricted) as well as if other members can download full size original images from your gallery. These settings can be found on your member profile page (click here).

Upload page

Our upload page is designed to look, feel and operate very similarly to the All photos and Album browsing pages. The toolbar along the top allows you to select different view modes, change photo selections and add photos for uploading.

To begin simply click on 'Add photos' and pick some JPEG files from your hard disk (we have some limits in place on the types and sizes of photos we currently support). As soon as you add our upload engine will begin thumbnailing them (you will briefly see a 'Thumbnail is being created ...' message, thumbnailing doesn't need to be complete before you begin uploading).

If our upload engine doesn't recognize a photo or it exceeds our limits then an error will be shown in place of the thumbnail. At this stage nothing has been uploaded but you can already work on the photos either individually or in batch by selecting one or more photo and clicking on the action buttons in the yellow toolbar (selected photos are indicated by a yellow border). Note you can quickly select all photos with the 'Select: All' button on the top toolbar.

However the real power of our uploader is the ability to do this kind of work during the upload itself (traditionally wasted time), click on 'Start upload' and you can continue performing edits such as titling, permissions, tags and rotation even while the batch is uploading.

Once your upload has completed you can choose to return to your All photos, the selected album or begin a new upload batch.

Upload limits

JPEG image files only (for now)

Maximum of 20 MB or 20 megapixels in size

Maximum of 30,000 pixels along any axis

Free account limits

Maximum of 200 MB uploads per month (resets first of each month)

Maximum of 1,000 photos in total per account

Pro account (coming soon)

No monthly upload limits

No total photos limit

All photos and browsing

All photos is your entire collection, it contains everything you have uploaded, latest first. The toolbar shown at the top of the page allows you to change options such as the amount of detail shown for each thumbnail, number of rows per page and page number. In this mode you can simply browse photos, clicking on a thumbnail takes you to the photo detail page. The arrows beside the page number indicator are used to browse through pages of photos or enter a page number below the 'Page' label and press Enter.

Photo detail page

The photo detail page has the following sections:

Toolbar - allows you to browse one by one or return to all photos / album

Film strip - a scrollable strip of photos (in the example above all photos but can be an album)

Title - the title of the photo

Edit functions - only visible if you are the owner of this photo (more here)

Photo - a 'web sized' version of the photo, click for a larger view (fit within 1600 x 1200)

Tags - the tags assigned / imported on this photo

Albums - a list of albums in which this photo features

Properties - metadata extracted from the image, including links to other sizes, specs, reviews

The film strip can be scrolled left and right by grabbing the handle and sliding it, or you can click on the line to move page by page.

Albums

The Albums page provides the ability to create new albums, browse your existing albums and edit titles, descriptions and cover photo. Click on an album cover image or title to browse the album.

The Albums browse view is very similar to All photos view, the primary difference being the album banner across the top which shows the cover image, title, number of photos and description (you'll only see the 'Title / Delete / Cover' buttons if you're the owner). The other main difference between All photos and Albums is that in Albums photos are shown in uploaded order (earliest to oldest).

Edit mode / functions

Switching to Edit Mode (click on the switch below the 'Edit mode' label) enables the Select toggle as well as showing the Edit toolbar (title, permissions, tags, rotate, delete and add to album).

In this mode clicking on thumbnails makes them part of the active selection, you can then click the required edit feature (such as rotate) from the yellow edit toolbar. Note that in edit mode these functions are also repeated below each photo and in the photo detail page.

Edit function dialogs

Each of the edit functions has a dedicated dialog box, the thumbnail strip across the top of each dialog provides a visual confirmation of the photos you're working on but also allows you to remove any photo from your selection by clicking on the small X at the top right corner of its thumbnail.

TitleChange the title, description and date stamp for the selected photo(s). Dates should be entered in the yyyy/mm/dd format.

PermissionsEdit the privacy and safety settings for the selected photo(s). Private photos are not visible to anyone other than you, although you can still share their URL.

TagsThe tag dialog shows you a list of tags which have been applied to the selected photos (left) and all of your tags. Simply click on an existing tag to assign it to the photos or type a new tag into the box at the bottom of the dialog and click on Add. (The ability to browse by tags and tag clouds will be added soon)

RotateThe rotate dialog allows you to rotate the selected photos by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. Note that this is in addition to any embedded rotation that may be recorded in the image metadata (by a camera orientation sensor for example).

DeleteDeleting photos from your 'All photos' page removes them completely as well as removing them from albums. Deleting photos from an album gives you the option to simply remove them from that album or delete them completely.

Add to albumThe selected photos will be added to an existing album or you can create a new album and add them. Note that you can also select / create an album at the time of upload.